“We hope financial aid to Ukraine will be granted in joint efforts of IMF member countries, including Russia,” Vygaudas Usackas said

Vygaudas Usackas

MOSCOW, February 25. /ITAR-TASS/. The European Union would be ready to discuss concrete amounts of financial aid to Ukraine after the coalition government was formed and its program was made public, the head of the EU delegation in Russia, Vygaudas Usackas, said on Tuesday.

He said the EU was holding consultations on aid “in different capitals”. “We hope financial aid to Ukraine will be granted in joint efforts of IMF member countries, including Russia,” he said.

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EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton met on Monday with the leaders of three opposition parties and an agreement was reached on financial aid that the new Ukrainian government would soon receive from the European Union, according to the website of the Batkivshchyna Party.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in Budapest on Monday that the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement may be signed as soon as a new stable government is formed.

“After setting Yulia Tymoshenko free Ukraine has fulfilled all the terms of signing the Association Agreement,” he said. “The treaty waits for signing and, as soon as Ukraine forms a stable government, it can be signed.”

Sikorski commented on the fact that Verkhovna Rada speaker and Ukraine’s interim president Oleksandr Turchynov confirmed the country’s intention to resume the European course, maintaining at the same time good relations with Russia.

The parameters of Russian aid to Ukraine will be determined in dialogue with a new Ukrainian government, the minister stated.

“The program of assistance, and not only assistance, but creation of the best conditions for mutual development of the economies, was coordinated with one government, with one president (in Ukraine) and included not only $15 billion support for the budget but also serious investment projects for the development of transport and energy infrastructure to a total amount of almost six billion (US dollars),” he said.

“Now we would like to understand who are the partners, what kind of government there will be, who will be in this government, what kind of program it will have and what its goals will be so that we could correct this (our) program. We have too little information at this point,” the minister said.

He recalled that one portion of Russian aid in the amount of three billion US dollars had already been paid. The money “was transferred to the budget of Ukraine, and we hope it served the purpose of budget stabilisation,” Ulyukayev said.

A second portion of two billion US dollars “was prepared but could not be transferred because of the serious changes (in Ukraine),” he added.